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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I’m not entirely sure what those movies are like, and don’t want to know, but ……

    My Mom watches horrible Hallmark stuff constantly. As far as I can tell, every movie has the same plot, they are low quality, etc. The thing is they are simple feel good movies for her. She finds them relaxing and gets good feelings from them, perfectly appropriate for “entertainment “.

    If there is any parallel here, my point is that you don’t have to appreciate them for your Mom to. Why does it matter whether you agree with the movies or not: do you love her? Do you want to help her with entertainment that makes her feel good /relaxed/entertained?



  • Yes, you should not be thinking about security in terms of an outside intruder here. Think about untrustworthy or potentially compromised devices.

    • WiFi smart devices are notorious for calling home, possibly collecting data, even if you’re trying to use them locally.
    • There have been botnets from unsecured video cameras, and even some compromised from before import.
    • TVs report back what you’re using them for and when, even playing through hdmi, and some have been caught listening in to your private conversations.

    How do you prevent these from happening, or limit what they can do? One way is to put them on a separate vlan without internet access (your HA or other hub can listen on multiple VLANs and be the gatekeeper) and without access to your computers.

    That being said, for similar requirements, I found managing the more complex network to be too much hassle, and went back to a simple flat network



  • Lots of foss use dual license: free for individual or non-profit use, but pay for commercial use, or even commercial use above a specific threshold. As part of my job, I’ve had to remove several of these, where the developer thinks it’s free but the corp can’t comply with the free licensing. It works.

    Here’s an extremely well known example

    I still haven’t decided what kind of company mine is with respect to foss. Its a good thing that they put effort into complying with licensing terms, they do support developers making contributions back, and historically they’ve “bought” a few foss projects (hire the developer, include that in his job responsibilities)! However I haven’t yet seen them make a corporate contribution and the first response with being out of compliance is to remove the dependency.

    So it’s good that we take it seriously, and good that we historically contributed, however we don’t seem to co tribute much anymore and clearly get more benefit from foss than we give back




  • Yeah, if we focus on high value items, it becomes much simpler. But what if there’s a disaster like a fire? One shirt is too cheap to worry about but having to replace all your clothes is expensive, so what’s a practical way to inventory that?

    Looking at my home automation stuff, really the only expensive thing is my smart thermostat and it’s nit that expensive. However all the devices add up to several thousand dollars.

    Maybe there’s a sense of type and volume or something, and video or photos, that would be sufficient to inventory everyday stuff

    Actually, I’d also wonder how far insurance “replacement value” stretches. So many things I got on close out deals where the nearest remaining similar brand is several time the price




  • I’ve been wondering about that, since my Firestick became so shitty that I actually prefer streaming apps on my TV. Most of my devices are already on Apple, so how about this one?

    • I like fewer ads
    • if it’s like the Apple TV app, there’s too much pressure to buy stuff I’m never going to buy.

    So, on the home screen, can you tell which Videos are to purchase without clicking into them? Are things you subscribe to easily distinguishable from god forsaken ad infested ones?